Contra Costa County Grand Jury Report No. 1103 County and City Vehicle Maintenance and Usage Findings and

Exiting the leased Martinez maintenance facility and consolidating maintenance operations with the County facility could result in cost savings to Martinez. Response: Responding Response Comments Agency Contra Costa Agree County Board of Supervisors City of Disagree At the direction of the City Manager, our Maintenance Martinez Superintendent looked into the feasibility of consolidating our vehicle maintenance program with the County program approximately a year ago. The County maintains a large fleet of vehicles and equipment from internal groups such as, Sheriff, Fire, Public Works and Inspections. They do preventative maintenance and repair on an estimated 1400 units with nine mechanic. The Facility is approximately 6 miles from downtown and not in the City limits. The City of Martinez vehicle program is responsible for preventative maintenance and repair of 128 unit (sic) of equipment with two full time mechanics. They also outfit all of our police department vehicles with necessary lights, computers, cages and other required safety equipment. Our Police Department is extremely pleased with (sic) high quality of their vehicles and the timely response to needed repairs. The single facility houses the City’s entire maintenance operation which includes Streets, Water System, Parks and Fields, Building, Parking Meter and Vehicle maintenance. Thirty-three employees work from this facility and only two full time employees do vehicle maintenance. Contra Costa County 2011‐2012 Grand Jury Report 1201 Grand Jury Reports are posted at http://www.cc-courts.org/grandjury

Spare parts inventories in Contra Costa County, Richmond, Brentwood, and Martinez are much higher than the $206 average of all agencies reporting such inventories. Response: Responding Response Comments Agency Contra Costa Partially The County has a very unique Fleet, which includes specialized County disagree equipment such as trailers (See attachment A), forklifts, golf carts Board of and brush chippers (See attachment B). This additional Supervisors equipment has many parts included in our inventory, which inflates the value of our inventory. If the County includes this type of equipment, the County’s total vehicle count is 1,301 and the inventory value per vehicle is reduced to $234 per vehicle. In the “Grand Jury Request for Fleet Services Information” dated August 11, 2010, the Grand Jury requested that the County “please provide the number of vehicles by type, i.e. automobiles, (break out police vehicles separately) pickup trucks, light utility trucks, and heavy trucks (those requiring a Class A or B Contra Costa County 2011‐2012 Grand Jury Report 1201 Grand Jury Reports are posted at http://www.cc-courts.org/grandjury Responding Response Comments Agency operating permit).” This resulted in the County providing a total vehicle count of 1,162. Upon further review the total vehicle count should have included the specialized equipment vehicles discussed above increasing the total vehicle count to 1,301, when comparing on-hand inventory on a “per vehicle” basis. Brentwood Partially City Council agree City of Disagree The report ( ) states that the City of Martinez reported Martinez inventories valued at $20,000 which equaled $465 per vehicle. The $20,000 estimate that we provided was for our “entire” fleet of 128 pieces of equipment owned by the City; (Police units, City vehicles, pick-up trucks, backhoes, dump trucks, riding mowers, street sweeper, and a variety of other equipment). The Grand Jury only used a select few vehicle types in their survey and calculations (autos, vans, SUVs and pickups only), which led to the extremely high spare parts per vehicle inventory figure in the report. When using only those types of vehicles, our spare parts per vehicle amount would be closer to $200 per vehicle. Richmond Partially The $470,000 originally reported to the Grand Jury was an error City Council disagree in the way our parts were being received into stock. The correct figure should have been $250,000. All parts, regardless of actually being in-stock items or non-stock items, were being processed as in-stock items. The dollar amount listed as spare parts inventory was for all 493 vehicles belonging to the City of Richmond. The city did not exclude police and fire spare parts from the total inventory amount.

The number of city and county vehicles being taken home after work results in significant taxpayer expense. Response: Responding Response Comments Agency Contra Costa Partially It should be noted that the total number of autos, vans, SUVs and County disagree pickups for the County is 1,022. The chart listed on of Board of Grand Jury Report No. 1103 shows 803 as the “Number of autos, Supervisors vans, SUVs and pickups for the County, however, the 219 vans on the list of vehicles provided by the County to the Grand Jury on September 10, 2010 were not included. Adding the 219 vans brings the total number of autos, vans, SUVs and pickups for the County to 1,022, and lowers the percentage of County vehicles taken home from 16% to 13%. City of Partially The City of Antioch has implemented a practice of permitting city Antioch agree vehicles to be taken home for the purpose of standby call-outs and emergency operational needs. Presently, no take-home vehicles are being driven more than fifteen miles from the location where the employee would report to work. City of Partially Brentwood agree City Concord Agree Town of Agree The practice of home garaging vehicles does result in incurring Danville an expense. Danville permits home garaging of vehicles assigned to certain Police and Maintenance personnel for purposes of emergency response and after hours callouts. The operational expense associated with this practice must be balanced with the need to provide a rapid response to preserve public safety and property. City of Disagree The City of El Cerrito disagrees that these take-home vehicles are El Cerrito a “significant taxpayer expense”. The average additional cost to the City is approximately $325.00 per month per person based on our $0.37 per mile operating expense. The cost of the vehicle would still be the same or possible (sic) higher as the City would still be required to provide these for each individual during their normal work schedule and past history has shown that the pool vehicles incur higher operating costs and are required to be replaced more than twice as often due to increased maintenance costs. City of Agree Hercules City of → No response to Finding. See comments in Recommendation Lafayette below. Contra Costa County 2011‐2012 Grand Jury Report 1201 Grand Jury Reports are posted at http://www.cc-courts.org/grandjury Responding Response Comments Agency City of Agree The City of Martinez has nine vehicles that are taken home after Martinez working hours. Five of the vehicles are Police Department vehicles and four are in Public Works Department. The City has allowed take-home vehicles for the purpose of standby call-outs and emergency operational needs. This practice will be reviewed during budget preparations to determine if continued use is justified. Town of Partially Agree with the finding and need to reduce the number of vehicles Moraga agree being taken home; but disagree that it results in “significant taxpayer expense”. The Town of Moraga has amended its current practice and has reduced the number of vehicles being taken home by one, since the responsibilities for “on-call” and emergency response are now being rotated to increase efficiency and equality in the Public Works Department. Three police vehicles still need to be taken home in order to expedite emergency response. Victim trauma and damage to public and private property and crime scenes can be minimized by immediate response by the Town’s limited staff resources. City of → No response to Finding. See comments in Recommendation Oakley below. City of Partially As the finding relates County-wide it does appear that there is a Orinda disagree significant expense to support this practice. However, as it relates to Orinda, there are 4 City Police vehicles that are assigned to Police personnel who are on-call and must respond from home. The 4 Police representatives who are allowed to take home vehicles are: 1. Orinda Police Chief 2. Orinda Police Detective Sergeant 3. Orinda Police Detective Officer 4. Orinda K-9 Officer No other City vehicles are assigned for take-home after work. City of Partially Pinole agree City of Agree The City notes, however, that the Grand Jury did not indicate Pittsburg whether this was a reasonable or unreasonable expense. Respectfully, the City firsts seeks to correct inaccuracies in the survey results contained in the initial report. The City’s motor pool of autos, vans and trucks currently numbers 154 vehicles, not the 115 listed on the table on of the report. Of these, 26 are taken home at times by on-call personnel. Therefore, the percentage of take-home vehicles is 17 percent of the motor pool. The table in the initial report showed 27 percent. The City would appreciate the modification of the table to reflect these corrections. Contra Costa County 2011‐2012 Grand Jury Report 1201 Grand Jury Reports are posted at http://www.cc-courts.org/grandjury Responding Response Comments Agency City of Partially The City of Pleasant Hill has implemented a practice of only Pleasant Hill agree permitting City vehicles to be taken home for the purpose of police standby call-outs and emergency operational needs. These vehicles are used rental cars obtained through auction and at a considerably lower cost than unmarked police cars. The vehicles have not been replaced in almost four years and their use does not result in “significant taxpayer expense.” City of Partially The number of take-home vehicles listed for the City of Richmond Richmond disagree is 24 take-home vehicles out of 355 autos, vans, SUV’s and pickups also includes 11 police and fire emergency response vehicles. The number of take-home vehicles that are autos, SUV’s and pickups, not including police and fire, is 13, for a total of 4% take-home vehicles. City of Partially The City of San Ramon has implemented a practice of permitting San Ramon agree city vehicles to be taken home for the purpose of standby call-outs and emergency operational needs.